The Reaction is Taking to Arms

Written:Written on June 3 (16), 1900Published:Published inVperyod, No. 9, June 4, 1906.

      Published according to the newspaper text.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1965,

      Moscow,Volume 10,

      pages508-513.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

TheSocial-Democratic press has long been pointing out that the
vaunted “constitutionalism” in Russia is baseless and
ephemeral. So long as the old authority remains and controls the whole vast
machinery of state administration, it is useless talking
seriously about the importance of popular representation and about satisfying
the urgent needs of the vast masses of the people. No sooner had the State Duma
begun its sittings—and liberal-bourgeois oratory about peaceful,
constitutional evolution burst forth in a particularly turbulent
flood—than there began an increasing number of attacks on peaceful
demonstrators, cases of setting fire to halls where public meetings were
proceeding, and lastly, downright pogroms—all organised by government
agents.

Meanwhilethe peasant movement is growing. Strikes among the workers are
becoming more embittered, more frequent and more extensive. Unrest is growing
among the most backward military units, the infantry in the provinces, and among
the Cossacks.

Fartoo much inflammable material has accumulated in Russian social life. The
struggle which ages of unprecedented violence, torment, torture, robbery and
exploitation have paved the way for has become too widespread and acute. This
struggle between the people and the old authority cannot be confined within the
limits of a struggle of the Duma for a particular Ministry. Even the most
downtrodden and ignorant “subjects” can no longer be restrained from
proclaiming the demands of awakening human and civic dignity. The old authority,
which has always made the lawsitself, which in fighting for its existence is resorting to the last, most
desperate, savage and furious methods, cannot be restrained by appeals to abide
by the law.

Thepogrom in Belostok is a particularly striking indication that the
government has taken to arms against the people. The old, but ever new story of
Russian pogroms!—ever, until the people achieve victory, until
the old authorities are completely swept away. Here are a few excerpts from a
telegram received from a Belostok elector, Tsirin:

“Adeliberately-organisedanti-Jewish pogrom has started.”
“In spite of rumours that have been circulated,not a single order has
been receivedfrom the Ministry all day

today !"“Vigorous
agitation for the pogrom has been carried on for the past two weeks. In the
streets, particularly at night, leaflets were distributed calling for the
massacre, not only of Jews, but also of intellectuals.The police simply
turned a blind eye to all this.”

Theold familiar picture! The police organises the pogrom beforehand. The
police instigates it: leaflets are printed in government printing offices
calling for a massacre of the Jews. When the pogrom begins, the police is
inactive. The troops quietly look on at the exploits of the Black Hundreds. But
later this very police goes through the farce of prosecution and trial of the
pogromists. The investigations and trials conducted by the officials of the old
authority always end in the same way: the cases drag on, none of the pogromists
are found guilty, sometimes even the battered and mutilated Jews and
intellectuals are dragged before the court, months pass—and the old, but
ever new story is

forgot ten,until the next pogrom. Vile instigation, bribery,
and fuddling with drink of the scum of our cursed capitalist
“civilisation”, the brutal massacre of unarmed by armed people, and
farcical trials conducted by the culprits them selves! And yet there are those
who, seeing these phenomena of Russian social life, think, and say, that
somebody or other is “recklessly” calling upon the people to resort
to “extreme measures”! One must be, not reckless, but a poltroon,
politically corrupt, to say such things in the face of events like the burning
of the People’s House at Vologda (at the time of the opening of the Duma) or the
pogrom in Belostok (after the Duma had been in session a month).A single event like this will have more effect upon the people than millions of
      appeals. And to talk about “reckless” appeals is just as
      hopelessly pedantic and as much a sin of a deadened civic conscience, as
      to condemn the wild cry for revenge that is going up from the battlefields
      of Vologda and Belostok.

TheDuma did the right thing by immediately discussing the interpellation on
the Belostok pogrom, and sending some of its members to Belostok to investigate
on the spot. But in reading this interpellation, and comparing it with the
speeches of members of the Duma and the commonly-known facts about pogroms, one
has a deep feeling of dissatisfaction, of indignation at the irresolute terms
in which the interpellation is worded.

Judgefor yourselves. The authors of the interpellation say:

“The
inhabitantsfearthat the local authorities and malicious agitators may
try to make out the victims themselves to be responsible for the calamity that
has be fallen them.”

“... False information on these lines is being circulated.”
Yes, the downtrodden and tormented Jewish population is indeed apprehensive of
this, and has every reason to be. This is true. But it isnot the whole
truth, gentle men, members of the Duma, and authors of the interpellation!
You, the people’s deputies, who have not yet been assaulted and tormented, know
perfectly well that this is not the whole truth, You know that the downtrodden
inhabitants willnot dareto name those who arereally
responsiblefor the pogrom.You must name them. That is what you are
people’s deputies for. That is why you enjoy—even under Russian
law—complete freedom of speech in the Duma. Then don’t standbetweenthe reaction and the people, at a time when the armed reaction
is strangling, massacring, and mutilating unarmed people. Take your standopenly and entirelyon the side of the people. Don’t confine your
selves to conveying the fear of the townspeople that the vile instigators of the
pogroms will say it is the murdered victims who are to blame.Indict the
culprits in unequivocal terms—itis your directdutyto the
people. Don’t ask the government whether measures are being taken to protect the
Jews and to prevent pogroms, but ask how long the government intends to shield
the real culprits, who are membersof the government. Ask the government whether it thinks that the people
will long be in error as to who is really responsible for the pogroms. Indict
the government openly and publicly; call upon the people to organise a militia
and self-defence as theonlymeans of protection against pogroms.

Thisis not in keeping with “parliamentary practice”, you will
say. Are you not ashamed to advance such an argumentevenat a time
like this? Don’t you realise that the people will condemn you if, even at a time
like this, you do not give up playing at parliaments and do not dare to say
straightforwardly, openly and loudly whatyou really know and think?

Thatyou know the truth about the pogroms is evident from speeches delivered by
members of the Duma. The Cadet Nabokov said: “We know that in many cases
the administration has not succeeded in allaying the suspicion that the
simultaneous outbreak of the pogroms is the result either of the Black-Hundred
organisations operatingwith the knowledge of the local authorities,
or, at best, of the latter’s systematic inaction.”

Ifyouknowthat this is so, gentlemen of the Cadet Party, you should
have said so in your interpellation. You should have written: Weknowsuch-and-such facts and therefore ask questions about them. And if you know what
happens “at best”, it isunseemlyfor people’s deputies to
keep silent about what happens atworst, about the deliberate
organisation of pogroms by the police on orders from St. Petersburg.

“Belostokis not an exceptional case,” rightly said Levin. “It is one
of the consequences of the system that you want to combat.” Quite right, citizen
Levin! But while in

news paperswe can only speak of the “system”,
you in the Duma ought to speak out more plainly and sharply.

“Pogromsare part of a whole system. In the October days ... the government
... found no other means of combating the liberation movement.... You know how
that chapter of history ended. Now the same thing is being repeated.... This
system isperfidiouslyprepared and thought out, and is being carried
outwith equal perfidy. In many cases we know very well who organises
these pogroms; weknow very well that leafletsare sent out by the gendarmerie departments."

Onceagain, quite right, citizen Levin! And therefore you should have said in
your interpellation: does the government think that the Duma is not aware of
the commonly-known fact that the gendarmes and police send out those leaflets?

DeputyRyzhkov bluntly stated that the allegation that pogroms are due to racial
enmity was alie, and that the allegation that they were due to the
impotence of the authorities was a malicious invention. Deputy Ryzhkov listed a
number of facts which proved that there had been “collaboration”
between the police, the pogromists and the Cossacks. “I live in a big
industrial district,” he said, “and I know that the pogrom in Lugansk, for
example, did not assume ghastly dimensionsonly because[mark this,
gentlemen:onlybecause] theunarmed workersdrove back the
pogromists with their bare fists, at the risk of being shot by the police.”

InRech, this part of the report of the debate in the Duma is headed
“The Government Is Indicted”. This is a good heading, but it belongs into
thetext ofthe Dumainterpellation, not into a newspaper
report. Either draft these interpellations in such a way as to make them a
passionate indictment of the government before the people, or in a way that they
may arouse ironical taunts and jeers at the crying discrepancy between the
monstrous facts and the bureaucratic evasions in bureaucratically-restrained
interpellations. Only by adopting the first-mentioned method will the Duma
teach the reactionaries not to jeer at it. As it is, the reactionaries are
jeering, quite openly and frankly. Bead today’sNovoye Vremya.These
lackeys of the pogromists are chuckling and making merry:

“One cannot help
observing with particular satisfaction [!!] the haste with which the Duma
interpellated the Minister on the anti-Jewish pogrom in Belostok.” You see: the
pogromists are particularly pleased—the flunkey blurts out the truth. The
reactionaries are pleased with the Belostok pogrom, and with the fact that they
can now abusively call the Duma the “Jewish” Duma. The reactionaries
jeer and say: “If, as was stated in the Duma today, we must pardon the
riotsagainst property made by the peasants in the Russian gubernias, then we must
also pardon the pogroms against Jewish property in the Western territory.”

Yousee, gentlemen of the Duma, the reactionaries are more outspoken than you
are. Their language is stronger than your Duma language. The reactionaries are
not afraid to fight. They are not afraid to associate the Duma with the
peasants’ struggle for freedom.Then don’t you be afraid
to associate the reactionary government with the pogromists!